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Autobiographical Explorations of Hobo Subculture ‘Such was the law of The Road’1 and Such were the Rules of The Text: Autobiographical Explorations of Hobo Subculture Joanne Hall Red Rocks Community College Lakewood, Colorado Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean – an ever-changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. – Jack London, The Road (p. 37). Jack London’s assessment of tramp-life suggests its movement, fluidity, dynamic nature and present-orientated temporal dimension. These sentiments, however, are but a whimsical side step, for the rest of The Road centralises the image of a masculine subculture with a complicated set of rules and ranks. Thus, the suggestion of fluidity clashes with the ‘laws’ that frame hobo experience, as represented by London’s text. Indeed, texts defining themselves as hobo autobiography demonstrate a number of structural similarities, suggesting that ideas of the romance or freedom of the road are, in fact, subservient to the repetitive, formulaic, mythic pattern of the subgenre. Yet, it is imperative to observe that while these texts are labelled as autobiography, charges of exaggeration and verbose storytelling could be levied against each of them. Indeed, their incorporation of tall tales dares the reader to question authenticity. However, instead of invalidating the claim to autobiography, this provides a springboard into multileveled issues of performance, creativity, artistry and authorship, succinctly linking with the myriad inter-textual references employed by the authors. Thus, Jack London’s The Road (1907), Harry Kemp’s Tramping on Life (1923), Jim Tully’s Beggars of Life: A Hobo Autobiography (1924), and Jack Black’s You Can’t Win: The Autobiography of Jack Black (1926)2 are interrogated here in order to explore these issues. It is posited that hobo autobiography is concerned with the ‘rules’ of the road that go some way to protecting the pseudo-fraternal practices of the subculture and that it employs linguistic strategies in order to develop a sub-categorised list of roles, revealing an interest in language. Most importantly, I argue that hobo writers associate much of hobo life with reading and writing, and, furthermore, are actively engaged in exploring the relation of hobo subculture to performance. Working With English: Medieval and Modern Language, Literature and Drama 6 (2010): pp. 1-13 2 © Joanne Hall In spite of recent interest in the figure of the hobo from historians,3 there has been little attempt to engage in literary and linguistic interpretations of hobo writing. This critical blind spot is particularly notable given that several dozen texts self-defined as hobo autobiography have been published. John Allen pinpoints the years between 1890 and 1940 as the key production period of the hobo autobiography.4 Historians’ examinations of the hobo foreground a similar timeframe; thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that a high volume of significant texts were produced during these decades. Richard Wormser states, ‘The era of the hobo and the tramp lasted for almost eighty years in American life, between the Civil War and the Second World War.’5 Tim Cresswell examines the tramp between 1870 and 1940. After this, he suggests, ‘their successors were known as migrants or migrant labourers.’6 Indeed, when considering the period after 1940, Nels Anderson, a hobo turned sociologist, argues that the hobo ‘has just about disappeared.’7 Likewise, Rodger Bruns observes that the hobo is all but ‘history and legend.’8 Thus, my discussion privileges paradigmatic examples from this key period; texts that are nevertheless part of a wider phenomenon, encouraged by pre-existing public interest.9 That is not to say, however, that the subgenre is exclusive to this timeframe, and it is possible to extend the discussion to include such examples as Nels Anderson’s The American Hobo: An Autobiography (1975); Oscar Dexter Brooks’ Legs: An Authentic Story of Life on the Road (1991); Charles Elmer Fox’s Tales of an American Hobo (1989); Lucius Shepard’s Two Trains Running (2004); and Paul Townsend’s Amateur Hobo (1953), each of which goes some way to indicating the continuing appeal of hobo autobiography to both writer and audience. Indeed, it is arguable that earlier examples of the subgenre foreshadow the autobiographical-ethnography of Ted Conover, Douglas A. Harper, Michael Mathers and James Spradley in Rolling Nowhere (1984), Good Company (1982), Riding the Rails (1973), and You Owe Yourself a Drunk (1971), respectively, and the autobiographical-novels of Jack Kerouac: On The Road (1957), The Dharma Bums (1958) and Desolation Angels (1965).10 Yet, in spite of the subgenre’s significance, indicated by its demonstrable appeal to multiple literary genres, texts from the key production/key historical period suffer from scholastic neglect. Moreover, the rare critical investigations of hobo autobiography miss the subtleties of the linguistic strategies employed by the texts. My discussion, therefore, concentrates on examples from the key production period, viewing these under-discussed texts as significant enough to warrant a concentrated focus. As a result, it is useful to illuminate the point at which this article intervenes in existing debates. Both Kingsley Widmer and Frederick Feied position the hobo as an important countercultural figure, providing a critique of mainstream society. Widmer argues that the most damning assessment of the mainstream arises from the hobo’s choice to roam,11 a position that disbars those compelled to wander from this conception of a rebel-hero hobo. Feied, meanwhile, suggests that hobo authors dramatise contemporary social problems through the hobo’s marginality.12 Unlike Widmer, Feied acknowledges the role that economic downturns play in swelling the ranks of homeless wanderers. Yet, both view the hobo as self-sufficient, daring, masculine, and individual; furthermore, both unquestioningly assume that the hobo’s wandering is unfettered by familial responsibilities.13 These readings of hobo autobiography, however, overemphasise the counter cultural aspects of the hobo lifestyle, supposing them to be akin to freedom. Working With English: Medieval and Modern Language, Literature and Drama 6 (2010): pp. 1-13 Autobiographical Explorations of Hobo Subculture 3 It is assumptions such as these that John Allen seeks to trouble by arguing that the glamorisation of the hobo in literature by both writer and critic is, at best, questionable and, at worst, capable of negative cultural impact. Allen, therefore, suggests that hobo autobiographies tend to romanticise the hobo lifestyle, underemphasising hardships in favour of unproblematised and optimistic depictions, and thereby doing ‘detrimental’ (Homelessness, p. 95) cultural work. However, the glamorisation that Allen views as foregrounded within the texts is more appropriately read as authorial lip service to the pace and excitement of the adventure narrative. Moreover, it is sensible to assume that the autobiographies’ linkage of movement and action, coupled with the focus on a period of time immersed within a mobile subculture, forms a large part of their appeal. Indeed, I argue that rather than glamorise the hobo lifestyle, these texts are at pains to stress the pseudo-fraternal ‘rules of the road’ by which each author is bound. Rules continue to influence the representation of the subculture once the road is left behind, for each text works within the potentially prohibitive conventions of the subgenre. Thus, in this instance, the employment of the concept of cultural work as a framework for analysis and assessment results in an overly didactic critical approach that ignores the textual subtleties of individual autobiographies, such as the level of their adherence to, or manipulation of, the conventions of the subgenre.14 Moreover, Allen’s assessment bypasses reader response and does not acknowledge the ability of an individual to ‘read between the lines’ or pick up cues based on differing levels of interpretation, textual interaction, and subject-specific knowledge. Each of the critics discussed thus far misses much of the subtlety of hobo autobiography. They overlook the manner in which the representation of hobo subculture in autobiographical form is constricted by the formulaic, mythic patterns of the subgenre. As a result, they miss a key feature of these texts: the importance of language, which is used both to further categorise hobo subculture and to knowingly play with hobo conventions, framing stories within stories. Highlighting the conventions of the subgenre, texts self-defined as hobo autobiography tick certain boxes. Each refers to disruptive and transient formative years. Tully was an orphan, and the mothers of Kemp and Black died when the boys were four and ten respectively. Kemp’s father initially embraces a transient existence, and leaves the boy in his grandmother’s care. Comparably, Black’s father sent him away to boarding school. Continuing to wander and form temporary relationships, the young author becomes an apprentice to, or is merely influenced by, a hardened hobo (Black, You Can’t Win, p. 71; London, The Road, p. 89-91; Tully, Beggars, p. 12), and later experiences an attachment to a prostitute (Black, p. 57-58; Tully, p. 295-302). During this early period, he discovers that hobo subculture is structured around both roles and rules. Tully writes, ‘hoboes regard their chosen profession seriously. There is much to learn in the game and much more to endure’ (Beggars, p. 11). It is not incidental that the texts’ descriptions of hobo subculture are heavily invested with fraternal and military comparisons. Indeed, London refers to the subculture as ‘the fraternity’ (The Road, p. 47).15 Moreover, he learns that the hobo's mythologised mobility is tempered, not least of all by the policing of railroad detectives.
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